People Mastodon

social media without advertising and corporate algorithms

"But I like adverts! Sometimes I get really interesting products!" - shit I unironically heard more than once.

In what context is it AI-free conversation?

I was under the impression that the Fediverse is full of AI content, given how frequently and consistently people seem to make accusations of "Nice AI comment" and things of that nature.

"ItS LiKe EmAiL"

This is a good post, explain why you'd use it and not how it functions under the hood. 👍🏼

This is all valid, and I agree that it's probably more relevant to the average person than a technical explanation, but it also begs the question of why they couldn't just go to Bluesky or some other centralized platform that markets itself on the promise of minimal ads and algorithms. The answer, of course, is that centralized platforms can "alter the deal" whenever they want, and history shows that it's just a matter of time until they do just that. Federation doesn't just provide an ecosystem of algorithm free social media now, it also effectively innoculates that ecosystem against future enshitification.

Maybe just add that on to the end of your sales pitch, or be prepared to explain it of asked.

Love the sentiment. One nitpick is that algorithms are designed to sell ads - they are there to engage a person and keep them engaged. A good algo keeps a user online. A great algo keeps them using without noticing the service, it blends in like a habit.

Algorithms make the tech an addictive drug.

I tell people it's non-corporate parts of the web, which amounts to largely the same thing.

Or one time "instead of one asshole owning the whole thing, it's a bunch of little assholes running their own parts. ".

I just say “Lemmy is like Reddit without the ads or AI slop, and Mastadon is like Twitter without the bots. Best of all, both are owned by individuals and not just a single large corporation”. There’s no reason to get overly technical on it when you can draw parallels to what exists.